Finding Joy in Our Lives

Introduction

Now it’s time for the interactive quiz portion of our assembly. And this morning’s question is simple, and that is do you do roller coasters? You see a show of hands. Do you ride roller coasters? All right. There’s generally two types of people in this life. There are those who don’t mind entrusting their life to someone else and strapping in that seat and going fifty, sixty plus miles an hour. And then there’s the other tie. Those who would rather hold the bags and eat your roles and sit and wait while others risk their lives. Because some people don’t like that thrill. They don’t like the quick up and the even faster down. But you know, I ask you if you ride roller coasters. But use metaphorically, everybody needs to raise their hand.

Because life is a roller coaster, isn’t it? We’ve all experienced the high, the what we sometimes call the mountaintop experience, to where we’re on top of the world, and everything seems to be lining up and working out great for us. But then we’ve all been in the valley. Where it seems like life and the elements and components of life are all against us. And everything’s going wrong.

And the question is, if that is life, and it is, what does God want us to do with that? Does God want us to just ride that roller coaster emotionally? Does he expect us to enjoy the joys of life? And then at other times to just be downright despondent and miserable. Or does God have another plan? Does God have a better way for us? Would you turn with me in your New Testament to the book of Philippians? I want to do something a little different for me here at least, and that is we’re going to start a series of lessons. We don’t do a whole lot of series, but we’re going to do a brief series entitled Finding Joy in Our Lives. And maybe not surprisingly, to you Bible students, we’re going to do that from the book of Philippians.

And so for the next few weeks, all of our lessons are going to be drawn from the book of Philippians. And so I invite and plead with you for two things. Number one is right now get your Bibles and turn to Philippians, but then throughout this series, spend some time with me in the book of Philippians. Not just on Sunday mornings when we’re together, but throughout the week, read. It’s a short book. But read the book of Philippians over and over again. Meditate upon the contents of these passages. And I think you’ll be blessed in our study of the Word of God. Paul’s life. He would not have said it this way. But Paul’s life was a roller coaster, wasn’t it? Paul experienced some great top of the mountain experiences in his life.

He seemed to be climbing to the top of that mountain in Judaism when we’re introduced to him as the Saul, the persecutor of God’s people. But he was quickly thrown down into the valley on the road to Damascus when he realized that the God that he thought he was diligently serving was actually his enemy. And he was just as wrong as wrong could be.

Going off as they began to connect those Old Testament passages and prophecies to the person and the miracles and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And if people submitting as he had done previously to the act of baptism and having their sins washed away. But like a roller coaster does, it would take a quick dive. As the unbelievers, the opponents of the gospel would rail against that message. And we might often think of the low points in Paul’s life being the beatings, the stonings, the imprisonments. But I tend to think that probably the lowest points of Paul’s life were not the fact that he was beaten and stoned and imprisoned, as bad as that was, but so many times, over and over again, those moments took him away from the preaching of the gospel.

It wasn’t the beating and the imprisonment that was the low moment in Paul’s life. It was the fact that those beatings and imprisonments stopped him from preaching the gospel temporarily. Or that he would have those mountaintop moments and preaching and people obeying the gospel in a city like Philippi, but he had to leave quickly because of the threats and the persecution. You know that on that second missionary journey when he comes into the city of Philippi. Remember that from Troaz, he had received what we call the Macedonian call. He saw a vision of someone saying from Macedonia, come and help us.

Like a roller coaster does, it took a dive when he’s thrown into prison in the city of Philippi. Has to leave Philippi and go to Thessalonica. Doesn’t get to spend much time in Thessalonica because that’s another low moment in his life when because of the persecution he has to flee from Thessalonica. But in the midst of those low moments were high moments because the church at Philippi had gone with him, so to speak, on the rest of those journeys. They were sending their support and their love to Paul. Even throughout his third missionary journey, he would go back through those regions, and the church at Philippi gave him some of the highest moments probably of his preaching life when they over and over again reached out to Paul, helped and supported Paul, gave Paul out, he would tell the Corinthians, out of their poverty, gave Paul funds to help the needy saints in Judea.

At the end of that third missionary journey, Paul will find himself at the bottom again as he’s thrown into prison.

A series of off and on imprisonments that will end in his death. And he writes back this very personal letter, maybe one of the, if not the most personal letter of Paul’s that we have in the scriptures. Because Paul would write some letters that were pretty rough and pretty harsh and corrective letters. We think of 1 Corinthians and Galatians. And Paul would write some really doctoral thesis, some deep doctrinal letters like Ephesians and Romans. But then he would write this jewel, the book of Philippians. This deeply personal to a congregation, to a church of God’s people who had given him his mountain moments. And he’s writing to them while he is in a valley. But he writes to them about the subject of joy.

Joy and rejoice, 16 times in four brief chapters. And in fact, they pervade every chapter. We read the words joy and rejoice. And in that, and in the contents of this letter, we have God’s formula for finding joy in our lives.

1. I Have You in My Mind

Not just joy in the momentary happiness because things are going right, but an abiding joy, despite the circumstances of life. And let’s see how God, how the apostle Paul delivers us the message of God about finding joy in our lives. Have you opened there to Philippians chapter 1? Let’s begin in our reading. In verse 1, Paul and Timothy, bond servants of Jesus Christ, to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi with the bishops and deacons. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Now I want us to read verses 3 through 11, and in very preacher like style, I’ve broken down this into three points here that will be our lesson for this morning. First of all, he says, beginning in verse 3, I have you in my mind.

Look what he says in verse 3. I thank my God upon every remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine, making request for you with all joy for your fellowship in the gospel from the first day until now.

The church at Philippi and how this must, what this must have meant to them to receive this communique from Paul while he is in prison, soon to be under the sentence of death, for Paul to say to them, you know, I think about you a lot. We love hearing those words, don’t we? I’ve been thinking about you. I’ve been praying about you. Now, some of us, myself, when someone says, I’ve been thinking about you, we might for a moment cringe a little bit. What have you been thinking? But when that person who means so much to us says, not only have I been thinking about you recently, or been thinking a lot about you, but it’s good thoughts. I’ve been praying for you. And those thoughts are joyous thoughts.

I think there’s at least two lessons in this first point, these first couple of verses, that we can see about finding joy in our lives, and that is that the joy is found in fellowship. Fellowship with God and fellowship with God’s people. And so he says, I have you in my mind. We learn this fundamental lesson about Christian godly joy, and that is this joy is not based upon external circumstances. It can rise above those external circumstances. And we can have joy despite what might be going on around us and even within us. When you read this joyous epistle, when you read joy and rejoice repeated sixteen times in this short letter, don’t ever forget where Paul is when he’s writing this letter.

He’s in the darkest of valleys. But at the same time, he is on the mountain. Because he has the proper perspective. That our joy does not have to be determined by our circumstances. And so while life is that roller coaster full of ups and downs, our spiritual state can be like my type of roller coaster. And that is always the same.

It comes from our association and our partnership in the things of God. Notice that he says, first of all, I thank my God. God is going to not surprisingly permeate Paul’s thoughts about them and about his abiding joy. But he says, I thank God for you, I pray for you, I have good thoughts when I think about you constantly, because, verse 5 again, for your fellowship in the gospel from the first day until now. They had participated with Paul in the preaching of the gospel. We turn to this passage, appropriately so, many times to talk about a local church’s responsibility and role in preaching the gospel through others. Recently we did a video chat with William Stewart, who preaches the gospel in Canada. He doesn’t preach the gospel in Canada alone.

You and I are preaching the gospel in Canada. You may have never crossed that frozen border, but you’ve preached the gospel in Canada. You’ve preached the gospel in Africa. And all the places of men that we support and we have fellowship with.

And in the fellowship of the gospel itself.

2. I Have You in My Heart

There’s joy to be found in our fellowship. And it saddens me to ironically say that in a lesson about joy. But it saddens me when there’s Christians who don’t experience that. Who, for whatever reason, want to live on the periphery, on the outlying part of this fellowship. Who might come to services frequently or infrequently, but have not fully immersed themselves into what God has intended this to be. And they’ve just missed out on the joy that is to be experienced in God’s family and in this fellowship. And so he says, I have you in my mind. Continuing reading in verses 6, 7, and 8, he’s going to say, I have you in my heart. Now you might say, well, wait a minute, that’s the same thing, isn’t it?

Well, indulge me here. I needed three points. But no, in this idea, really, the mind and heart are there’s a distinction to be made. In mind, he just says, I’m in thinking about you. I have you in my remembrance, but it goes deeper and even more emotional than that when he says, beginning in verse 6, being confident of this very thing, that he who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ. Just as it is right for me to think of this of you all, because I have you in my heart. Inasmuch as both in my chains and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel, you all are partakers with me of my grace. For God is my witness.

How greatly I long for you all with the affection of Jesus Christ. Paul from that prison cell could say, I’m smiling because I’m thinking of you. You come to my mind and in my prayers frequently. Because you’re in my heart. And in my heart there is that joy related to you that’s attached to confidence. I’m confident, Paul says. And to paraphrase, I’m confident that you will be saved in that last great day. Now it’s important to point out here that Paul’s confidence did not rest solely or even primarily in those Philippian brethren. He says that his confidence rested in God. Being confident of this very thing, verse 6 again says, that he who has begun a good work in you will complete it. The child of God finds his joy in confidence.

Confidence that doesn’t reside in self, but that resides where it ought to reside in the steadfast, steady, strong hand of God. God started something in you, Paul says. And God’s not a quitter. He’s going to finish it. This same Paul, famously in the book of Romans, talks about the love of God that we know was demonstrated and personified in the giving of his son. But Paul would point out to those Roman brethren and to us that if Christ died for us when we were sinners, when we were alienated and enemies, there’s no way to measure how much he loves us now. That we’re his children. And we think about that love for the lost. But think about the love for the saved. If he loved us while we were rebelling, how much does he love us now?

If he went to those lengths to save us when we were afar, what’s he going to do to save us now that we’re near? Now, we need not misconstrue and misapply that confidence. It doesn’t mean we can just get do whatever we want to do, and God’s going to overlook it. We’re not the teacher’s pet. We’re not that favored child, or maybe more properly, grandchild who can just get away with anything. But there is confidence that resides in the fact that we are the children of God, and God wants us to be saved and will do what is necessary for us to be saved. I am confident that he who began in you a good work will complete it. Don’t doubt the confidence and the willingness of God to get you to heaven.

And Paul said, that makes me happy. And so I think about you a lot, and I pray about you a lot because you’re in my heart. And then he goes on to say that he loves them. I have the affection, the end of verse 8, of Jesus Christ. Paul did not love them with the love of Paul or of any other man. He loved them with the love of God. He loved them as God loved them. And he loved them as God or Christ would want Paul to love them.

Sometimes y’all ain’t real lovable. And sometimes I’m not real lovable.

And back up just maybe just one page in your Bible to Ephesians 5. And sometimes it may be difficult to love with the love of kin or the love of a human being. Paul says, I love you with the affection of Jesus Christ. And sometimes we may even make the statement about somebody that only God could love them. Well, read Ephesians 5, verses 1 and 2 with me. Therefore, be imitators, be imitators of God, as dear children, and walk in love. As Christ also has loved us and given himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet smelling aroma. That’s the affection of Jesus Christ. That God loved the unlovable.

3. I Have You in My Prayers

No. I love you with the affection of Jesus Christ. Because of the fellowship that we have in and through him. I love you. And he says, I have you in my prayers. Now we talked about the confidence that Paul had in them that rested and resided in God. I don’t want to minimize what the Philippians had done, though. They had been there for Paul. Notice what he says about that. Again, back up to verse 5. They had had fellowship with him in the gospel. Verse 7 says, inasmuch as both in my chains and in the defense and the confirmation of the gospel, you’re all partakers with me of grace. They had been a steady source of encouragement to Paul. And that’s what had fostered this relationship.

Paul says, You’ve had fellowship with me. And I mean from day one when he left Philippi on that second journey. They had constantly.

So Paul says, because you’ve had fellowship with me, and because you have, even in my chains, in my defense of the gospel, you’re still there. Paul says, you haven’t abandoned me. And I think sometimes we have a little bit of a skewed view of the way that would have looked and felt and happened in the first century. Twenty first century or first century.

Now we might tend to think, well, in the first century, it was different. Actually, it would probably have been much worse in the first century, the shame attached. But we might say, but Paul was there because he was preaching. He hadn’t done anything wrong. Well, he had done something wrong and actually killed people. But that’s not why he was in prison. He was in prison just because he was preaching the gospel. He would say in the book of Acts, it’s all I said was the resurrection. And now I’m in prison. And so we might say, all shame would have been removed because he was there for preaching the gospel. No. First century, 21st century. It was something to be ashamed of. And because of that, Paul would say to the Philippians and others, in commending them, you were not ashamed of my chains.

And do we need to remind ourselves that Paul in one of those valleys to his protege Timothy would list off the ones who had abandoned him because of his chain.

Not you, Philippians. You’ve been with me. You were with me on the mountaintop, and you’re the same with me on the valley, in the valley. Pardon me while I get a little personal in self serving here. Preachers need that. Shepherds need that. Deacons need that. Everybody needs that, but let me talk to you a little bit about preachers.

It’s easy to support your preacher when he’s looking and sounding good and everybody else wants him for a gospel meeting, maybe as their own preacher, but we got him. And we can be proud of him and tickled of him. But what if that preacher’s going through a valley? I tried to print bumper stickers several years ago, but I didn’t sell many, and the bumper sticker simply said preachers are people too. Preachers go through valleys in their life, in their personal lives. They deal with temptation and sin and discouragement and hardship and controversy. Now I’m not saying we should support a man, myself included, who’s preaching false doctrine, who’s not living a good moral life.

No matter what others were saying, no matter what accusations or controversy or crimes I had been accused of, you were there. And so I have you in my heart and in my prayers. Look with me at verses 9 and 10. And this I pray that your love may abound still more and more in knowledge and all discernment, that you may approve the things that are excellent, and that you may be sincere and without offense to the day of Christ. I make memory of you in my prayers constantly, he says, and this is what I’m praying. That you might increase in love and knowledge and discernment. There’s that balance that needs to be had. It’s not all about love. It’s not all about knowledge. It’s about love and knowledge and discernment that you may approve the things that are excellent, that you might make the right choices, that you might do what you need to do.

Conclusion

Paul says that, that fellowship has brought me joy. All right.

Sure you do. We all do. But you can have the joy that this man facing the sentence of death sitting in a Roman prison, imprisoned by his enemies, and even forsaken by some of his friends. You can have that joy in your heart this morning by becoming a part of this fellowship. Fellowship with God’s people, but more importantly, a fellowship with God, the giver of life and joy. Would you do that this morning? Would you immerse yourself in this cause and support it and defend it and love it and rejoice in it until the joy of all joys calls you home? Can we help you this morning as you render obedience to the gospel? If so, let it be known right now.